A Letter to My Son on His Six Month Birthday

A mother writes to her son about all the changes and developments he's made in a mere six months.

Today you are seven-and-a-half months old. Yeah, sorry, I'm a little behind. I meant to write you a letter every month of your first year, like I did with your sister. Unfortunately, this is only letter number two. It's a second-kid thing, I guess. Also, I didn't make a baby book for you. Rest assured, you started developing skills and doing stuff at various times, and it was all amazing.

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Today you woke up a different baby than yesterday. You had a good sleep of seven or eight hours before you diplomatically invited yourself into the big bed. This long rest must be when those new synapses started firing in your tiny baby skull, because today you shouted in protest when Harper grabbed the ball you were holding. You saw your babysitter, grinned, and reached out for her, saying what sounded, I swear, like, "Hey!" When I see you sitting (a new skill for you) in the middle of the living room, watching your sister leap around pretending to be a fairy, I see a little boy there, and it makes me already miss my baby.

I'm not sure who told you about being a boy, but you already seem to already awfully boyish. For over a month now you've been creeping along, slapping your fat little hands on the ground and scooting forward. Harper, on the other hand, sat perfectly still at four months, and didn't creep until something like nine months. (This never bores me, the tireless recitation of comparisons, inevitably punctuated with the exclamation, "These two are so different!"—as if this came as some big surprise.)

Today at the Y you screamed and screamed. "What, baby? You want milk?" I asked. A babysitter sitting nearby smiled slightly and said, "I think he wants that ball." Yes, it was a ball you were after. You also love to play with blocks—your preferred technique being chewing—and whenever we set you down in the living room you scoot right to the little red piano, reaching with great effort to pound on the keys. This is very satisfying to us, as it clearly signifies your musical genius and justifies our purchase of said piano, which Harper uses mostly as a stool on which to sit and read.

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Last week you started joking around with us. We were playing peekaboo with a bib, and when the game flagged, you grabbed the bib and pulled it up over your face and then down again, laughing uproariously at your achievement. You splash in the bath now, too, and open and close book pages, again with the uproarious laughing. This is kind of a theme with you—the loud, raucous laugh (usually at Harper) accompanied by a huge grin that now features two bottom teeth.

When I was pregnant with you I was prone to thoughts like, "How on earth will we love him as much as Harper? She's such a little person, our tiny buddy!" And now you're here, and it's become a bit of a joke in our family how obsessed with you I am. I love to chomp on your marshmallow cheeks. I don't even mind when you piranha-bite while nursing, or yank at my hair with the strength of Andre the Giant, because it's all just so good-natured.

Your family loves you more than we can say, baby boy. Which is why instead of trying to, we just say, "Hey, where's the baby? Oh, he's off in the corner chewing an extension cord."

Yeah, sorry, it's just that second kid thing again.

Love,

Mama

Amy Shearn is the mother of two small children, and is the proprietress of Household Words, a blog about babies, books, and Brooklyn. She also writes for Oprah.com and MommyPoppins.com. Amy is the author of the novel How Far Is the Ocean From Here (Shaye Areheart/Crown 2008) and a forthcoming novel about, what else, a Brooklyn mother, which needs a title and will be published by Touchstone, an imprint of Simon & Schuster, in 2013.

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